GOP Corruption Meltdown in Florida

The party of the itchy fingers continues to show that the GOP family values strealing other people’s money most of all.

Gov. Charlie Crist personally signed off on his former Republican Party chairman’s confidential fundraising role with the state party, according to Jim Greer’s attorney, whose allegation contradicts the governor’s statement that he "didn’t know anything" about the deal now part of a criminal investigation.

State investigators say Greer and the party’s former executive director, Delmar W. Johnson III, secretly set up a shell company called Victory Strategies to divert party money and enrich themselves. Greer was charged Wednesday with fraud and money laundering.

But Greer’s attorney, Damon Chase, said Saturday that the deal giving them a 10 percent cut of party donations was legal. What’s more, Chase said Crist’s former right-hand man, now U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, first proposed the idea that they earn a fundraising commission to save the party money and replace the $30,000-a-month contract with fundraiser Meredith O’Rourke.

"You guys work hard. You deserve it," Chase said Greer was told by the governor as they played pool in February 2009 at a Palm Beach golf tournament.

Crist, an independent candidate for Florida’s open U.S. Senate seat, said Saturday that he didn’t know about Victory Strategies until after Greer resigned in January. He said he knew Greer wanted to replace O’Rourke with Johnson, but was unaware that they set up a separate company and that Greer had a stake in it.

"Jim thought a change would be a good idea, and I said, ‘Whatever you think needs to be done, and if you need to bring in Delmar, that’s fine,’ " Crist said.

How could he not have known about Victory Strategies as the head of the party? "I’m the guy in charge of the state," said Crist, who was in Pensacola on Saturday responding to the Gulf Coast oil spill. "I’ve got a state to run, and that’s my focus."

LeMieux said it was not true that he came up with the idea for the company. "I first learned about it when I read about it in the newspapers" earlier this year, he said Saturday. He said he was only aware that Johnson could earn more money if he met fundraising targets.

For Greer to point a finger at Crist and LeMieux, his political benefactors who stood by him for months amid cries for his ouster, amounts to yet another dramatic twist in a scandal that has tainted the Florida GOP and roiled the 2010 election season… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <St. Petersburg Times>

I’ll be the first to admit that the GOP does not have a monopoly on corruption, as there have been corrupt Democrats as well.  The difference is that Democratic corruption is a low grade infection, while Republican corruption is a raging epidemic.

In this case, I have no idea what the truth is, because when Republicans contradict each other, there is an outside possibility that one of them might be telling the truth.  That notion in itself shocks rational sensibilities, because honesty runs so contrary to GOP family values.